The man peering from the screen frowned, and Hannah felt sure she recognized him from somewhere but could not place him just then. Meanwhile, the view over his right shoulder was distracting, for it showed a window through which the interior of Arcoplex One could be seen, which resembled a city distorted through a fish-eye lens.

‘Why have you shut down rotation?’ the man enquired. ‘Zero gravity is making a lot of people in here feel sick.’

‘It is a safety protocol, Delegate Shanklin, which negates the possibility of catastrophic failure of the cylinder motors, should they suffer munitions damage.’

Shanklin was the Committee delegate for East India, and therefore controlled the Asian voting bloc, but other than that, Hannah knew little about him.

‘Yet you didn’t shut it down when either Malden or Saul penetrated the station?’

‘The threat they presented to the structure of the Argus Station was negligible. Should those currently approaching us aboard the space plane be prepared to use force on Messina’s behalf, they will be equipped to the highest level of Committee military requirements.’

Shanklin stared at him for a long moment. ‘I’m hoping, Smith, that we haven’t all made a big mistake with you.’

‘Considering that you have,’ Smith replied, ‘the time in which you might have corrected that mistake has already expired.’ Then he shut off the transmission.

‘Your backers?’ Hannah risked asking him.

‘Committee delegates tend to get overly attracted to power and its trappings,’ he replied distractedly.

‘How many are here?’

Without looking round he replied, ‘Fifty delegates in all, along with their staff and families. Over two thousand people.’ Coming from him it was a surprisingly direct response.

‘So they got you here, didn’t they?’ ventured Hannah. ‘And now they’re just a millstone round your neck.’

He turned to give her an unreadable look. ‘They certainly would have been useful in re-establishing the rule of the people back on Earth, but a further one hundred and seventy delegates have made a provisional commitment to back me for the chairmanship.’

To Smith, it seemed, ‘the people’, ‘the state’ and ‘the Committee’ were all the same thing, but only if it meant he himself got to give the orders.

‘Would have been?’ she asked.

He shrugged. ‘Alessandro Messina’s tyrannical arrogance is such that he would likely not let it come to a vote.’

Hannah glanced out through the windows allowing a view across the wheel of the space station. From where she was seated, she could just about see the space plane dropping down behind the station’s rim. Next she transferred her gaze back to the screens, one of which now showed the space plane moving in to dock, whilst another displayed the interior of that same dock.

‘His failure is inevitable,’ Smith added, studying the screens.